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Vitarka Project Summary
March 2008
During
the past year of schools and educational activity, with the generous support of
the Faith Community Capacity
Building fund (FCCB), the
Vitarka project has achieved the following:
We have
worked with 1,363 children, young people
and students in Bristol and the surrounding areas. We have worked
with children of every school year and
key stage, from reception to upper 6th, as well as 1 visit each
from an FE college and an HE college. Thanks to all the students and teachers
of each of these schools.
The contents of visits and activities have
varied widely, from presenting at large school assemblies, 6th form
multi faith conferences, teaching meditation to a philosophy club, to lessons
on the Noble 8 fold path and an introduction to Buddhism for students studying
on a ‘Health and Social Care’ course. The majority of visits hosted/visitors
provided have involved teaching and learning meditation, which seems to have
been appreciated as much by the teachers as by the students.
7 visits
have been provided to 4 primary schools across the city. We
have worked with: Teyfant (Hartcliffe), St Mary Redcliffe (Windmill Hill), Westbury Park
and Courtney (Kingswood). Two of the four
schools have had more than one visit. We also hosted a visit for the 18th
Bristol cubs,
enabling the children to prepare for their ‘World Faiths’ badge.
11 visits/visitors
provided have taken place with 9
secondary schools across the city and surrounding areas. 5 of the schools
visited us at the Bristol Buddhist Centre and we provided 6 visits to the
remaining secondary schools. 2 of these schools had repeat visits. We have
worked with Chew Valley
(Chew Magna, N Somerset), King Edwards School
(Bath), Wyedean 6th form (near
Chepstow), Clifton College (Clifton), Monks Park
(Horfield), Cirencester
College, Fairfield High
(Eastville), Brimsham Green (Yate) and Broadoak (Weston super mare). We also
hosted a visit from 1 FE college (Filton
in North Bristol) and a visit from 1 HE
college, which consisted of undergraduate students studying at UWE,
studying Buddhism as part of their RE teaching degree. Our outreach work was
pretty far reaching, extending to Western
Australia, where we supported the work of a Y11
student looking at the Buddhist ordination of women in the west!
Interfaith and
multifaith activities
in the city included hosting the ‘Diverse Doors’ day in September last year at
the Buddhist Centre and supporting and helping to facilitate the Childrens’
Interfaith conference last July, hosted by Bristol City Council at the Council
House. I also continue as a representative on the Bristol standing advisory committee for RE
(SACRE) and will continue in this role beyond the life of the funded part of
the project.
Resource wise, the project has enabled us to
invest in resources which we wish to lend to local schools and community
organisations. This includes a shrine kit, more than 30 books about Buddhism
and meditation for children and young people of all ages, pictures, posters,
DVDs and CDs. We also improved our own infrastructure, developing a database to
track all the project activity and enabling us to keep in contact with the
schools. We hope to continue to post educational classroom materials to the
Buddhist Centre website, as a resource for students and teachers.
In terms of promoting
what we do, we have introduced the services of the Vitarka project to 17
secondary schools and 48 primary schools in the form of a mailshot. The project
has helped to strengthen the sangha (the
spiritual community of Buddhist practitioners) and much appreciation goes to
Bahiya, Henry Liebling, Julia Simnett and Pamela Crummay for the time and care
they have given to teaching, leading meditation and supporting the project
work. Thanks too for the Centre team for their ongoing involvement with
bookings and providing beautiful shrines!
Many many thanks and my appreciation to all concerned.
Kamalamani, March 2008
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